Network environments enable making large quantities of information available to network members using a Web browser, for example. Typically there is a one-way transfer of information from a Web page author to a group of Web page browsers who are able to display the page(s). Modifying the information in a Web page requires that the page author edit the content which defines aspects of the Web page, such as hypertext markup language (“HTML”). Several systems are available for modifying Web page content. Some of these systems present a page author with an editing interface on a Web browser from which the Web page content can be modified. Upon completing the modifications, the modified Web page content is stored at a Web server, for instance, so the updated page can be accessed by network members.
In a collaborative work environment, a plurality of users besides the page author may also desire the capability of modifying Web pages. But as mentioned above, Web pages typically are modified by one author who has access to the Web Page content, which may be stored at a Web server. The “Sparrow” system described in a publication titled “In-Place Editing of Web Pages: Sparrow Community-Shared Documents,” Bay-Wei Chang, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, Calif. 94304, U.S.A., April 1998, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, allows a shared Web page to be modified or augmented by any contributor. Specifically, the Sparrow system allows a user to contribute to a Web page in ways the page author has defined.
In the Sparrow system, a traditional Web page can be converted into a group-editable Web page by adding several additional strings of HTML syntax. The additional strings of syntax include a set of templates and a set of data contributions or items. The templates describe what data contributions the page may include, such as the number and kinds of data fields, and how those contributions will be formatted. An item is a single contribution, formatted according to the rules in one of the templates. Contributors add new contributions, or edit previous contributions, by filling in forms where these forms require no previous knowledge of HTML. With Sparrow, the page author can change the layout of such a page or the format of its items.
But editing the formatting information in a plurality of linked Web-editable pages is often difficult, tedious and expensive. In some systems, the formatting information is stored in the Web pages, requiring that the information in each page be modified manually by a copy/paste operation. This method is time consuming and prone to error. Other systems have attempted to deal with this problem by storing a single copy of the formatting information in a separate database, updating the single copy, and then dynamically creating Web pages using that formatting information in the pages as they are generated and displayed. This approach works, but inhibits the ability to easily copy a page since the formatting information and content are not in a single file. Further, this approach hampers making local customizations of formatting information in individual pages and prevents using standard editors and search engines that work with standard Web pages.